


List of Unsaid Things

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, Bounty Hunters, Coming of Age, Complicated Emotions, Gen, Jango Fett Lives, Murder, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Star Wars Prequel Trilogy & Pre-Star Wars: Original Trilogy, Violence, in a way and not a good one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Everyone in the core thought he died when the war broke out- including our client, apparently, who’s none to happy to discover that he’s alive and kicking. You want to make a name for yourself, kid? You flush him out."A young Boba Fett on his first solo hunt.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Jango Fett
Kudos: 17





	List of Unsaid Things

**Author's Note:**

> Does it count as faking your death if you just... get on with your life and never tell the people who think they killed you that they failed?

The thing about Jango is that, legally speaking, he’s dead. Good thing he never cared all that much about the law.

They aren’t exactly _hiding_. Reputation is one of the three things his father cares about. He would never throw it away by faking his death. The Republic thought they killed him, and the new Empire inherited their faulty records.

The Outer Rim is a good place to live if powerful people need to think you’re dead. 

Boba has his own set of armor now. When he slides the chest plate on, a new, frantic kind of energy bubbles under his skin. It’s like he’s spent his whole life buried underground and he’s just now breaking through the surface. He is alive. Every plate of metal, every seam, every clasp, and every stroke of paint belongs to him. He earned it, by the skin of his teeth. Helmet in his hands, he grins at himself in the mirror before turning to leave.

Jango waits for him, arms crossed over his chest by the door. The look in his eye is a familiar one. It means something like, _you are not stepping one foot past that door without talking to me first._

“Nervous?” Jango asks, quirking his eyebrow.

“No, not at all,” Boba says, which is a complete lie. Even though he’s tagged along on jobs since he was a kid, he can’t help feeling completely unprepared. On those hunts, he was there to help and to learn from the best. This job is his and his alone. His name and reputation are the ones on the line. So is his life if things go south. He adjusts his hold on the helmet. “I was just about to head out, actually.

“You look it.” Jango nods. “That armor will serve you well.”

“Mandalorian armor always does.” Just wearing the armor, he can feel its strength. His father’s own suit, so similar to his own, has been stolen, shot at, and worse, but it is no weaker than the day it was made. Again, he shifts the helmet, tucking it underneath his arm.

“You know your stuff; I’ll tell you that much. Just think ahead. Remember to watch your back.”

“I know, I know.” It’s the kind of thing his father says almost every day. Jango Fett spent his whole life filling his head with tactical skills and hard lessons. He can look his father in the eye now and understand the intent behind that kind of thing. Some parents keep their children close and safe, to protect them. Boba can protect himself.

A crooked smile pulls at Jango’s lips. “I know you’re going to do well. Someday, you’ll even surpass me.”

“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow night.” He smirks.

“Don’t push it,” Jango says, laughing, before his face grows serious. “Try to answer your comms if I call you. And, Boba, come right back home when you’re done.” Hanging in the space between his words is that thing neither one of them will ever admit. Their line of work is a dangerous one. Any given job can be a hunter’s last. He does not say, _keep yourself alive this time_ , but he doesn’t have to. Boba hears it anyway.

“I will,” he promises, letting out a breath of air.

Jango throws one arm around his shoulders, pulling Boba towards his side in a sort of half hug. Boba leans into it, suppressing an eye roll. 

“Seriously, Dad. I’ll be fine,” he says. He pats him twice on the back, and Jango pulls away with a stiff nod. The scar tissue on his throat twitches when he swallows.

“I know.” Jango says. “I do.”

Boba slips the helmet over his head. The door closes with a hiss behind him as he walks away, headed towards the ship he practically grew up on. He climbs the gangplank of the Slave I and sinks into the pilot’s seat, reaching up for the controls. The ship lifts, tilting until he’s seated upright, and he thrusts out of the atmosphere and into Outer Rim space.

The planet is a half-frozen desert of a world, sparsely populated. Even the settlements along the equator are cold. He lands the ship in a hangar near the edge of town. Buildings are clustered together, low to the ground to conserve heat. He drops into a bar. She’s waiting for him in a booth near the back.

The agent wears a high-collared, neon blue coat, so long she almost drowns in it. Everything about the Twi’lek woman is sharp, from her bony elbows to her teeth, which have been filed down to points. She taps her long fingernails on the glossy resin finish of the table.

“I’m looking for work,” he says, sliding into the booth.

“Straight to the point, I see,” she says, fishing something out of her pocket. “I can respect that. Want to really build a reputation?” 

“That would be the idea.”

“Then I have just the thing for you.” She presses a button. The face of his father glows blue. Of course, it’s a face a lot of people share. In that moment, Boba feels grateful for the helmet.

“Tell me what I’m looking at,” he says.

She has a voice like an oil spill. “This is Jango Fett.”

It’s not that he’s surprised, exactly. He knows they have enemies. He swallows. “Jango Fett?”

“You must be younger than I thought. Everyone in the core thought he died when the war broke out- including our client, apparently, who’s none to happy to discover that he’s alive and kicking. You want to make a name for yourself, kid? You flush him out.”

“I’ll take the job,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady, “But I need to know who called the hit.”

The agent sighs, leaning against the back of the booth. “Let’s not even go there. You can start negotiating terms when you’ve passed a test.”

“Tell me what you know!” He can’t let it slide. A well-aimed blaster ought to shut up whoever’s trying to kill Jango.

“You keep that up, I’ll give the job to someone else.”

It is a bluff, and he knows it. “No. You won’t. You’re only giving it to me because nobody else is willing to take it.”

“Most people have the self-preservation instinct that you seem to lack,” the woman agrees. “Even if I wanted to tell you, I couldn’t. I don’t know anything.”

Boba grew up around bounty hunters. He can spot a lie a mile away. “Fine. I can work with that.”

He shakes her hand and disappears with the bounty puck and the beginnings of a plan. If she’s halfway decent at her job, she keeps records, and she keeps them somewhere safe. Pressed flat against the roof, he waits, and then he waits some more. Finally, he sees a flash of blue, and rolls to his feet.

He tracks her loosely, just close enough to keep an eye on her as the agent shoves a key in the door of her house. Boba follows, slipping in through an attic window. The roof is shallow, with a low ceiling. To find the drop ladder, he has to crawl around on his hands and knees. It crashes to the floor with a thud and he winces. Slowly, he creeps down the ladder.

Only a few steps away, the agent is watching a holo film, some romance drama starring that Twi’lek who’s in just about everything these days. Her back is turned. He holds his breath.

The door to her office blends in with the wall, and he finds it more by feel than by sight. The door opens with a creak that is almost deafening in the silence. Light trickles in through the slats in the window blinds. A data pad sits on the desk, surrounded by a pile of pens and cigarette butts.

“Who’s there?” A voice calls. _Well, shit._ He sets his blaster to stun and crouches under the desk. Before she even steps through the door, she’s out. By the time she wakes up, he’ll be off this rock. He stuffs the data pad in his pocket and vanishes.

Back on the ship, he scrolls through page after page of record keeping. It’s dry enough that his eyes glaze over. He almost looks over the entry detailing his father’s bounty. The client’s name is written as anonymous- perhaps the agent isn’t a complete liar- but all the other details are there. He has the price on Jango’s head, and more importantly, the date the commission was made, via commlink, a little under seventy-two hours ago.

A little slicing practice couldn’t hurt.

Drifting through space, he sifts through her comms for ages before finding the one he needs. The transmission bathes the cockpit in flickering blue light. He listens carefully. The client’s voice sounds deeply artificial. They might be using a modulator. Then again, it might just be the sound quality. In a way, he’s done the agent a favor- she should have replaced her comm years ago.

Rusty as his slicing skills are, tracing the call takes two hours off his life and leaves him with a twitch in his left eyelid. Still, he manages to trace it to a distant, industrial moon, a colony with precious metals trapped just beneath the surface. He plots a course and jumps into hyperspace.

When he has a moment to breathe, he debates calling home. Nobody puts a hit out on Jango Fett, of all people, without a seriously dangerous chip on their shoulder. It could easily turn into a major operation. Having some backup could be crucial. On the other hand, Boba wants to handle it himself. He wants to prove that he’s a force to be reckoned with.

He wants to make his father proud. The last thing he needs is to look like some whiny kid who calls for help at the first sign of trouble. He doesn’t make the call.

The lunar city is a dense concrete jungle, a wasteland of factories and pollution. The warehouse is an unassuming place. The siding on the walls is riddled with graffiti and coated in the same chalky white dust that covers everything else here. With a little elbow grease, the garage door shudders open, revealing a nearly empty space.

Harsh shadows cut across the warehouse. The floor was almost bare, with only piles of garbage and pools from the broken pipes. Water droplets leak from the ceiling, splashing on his helmet. It should not be empty, not like this. The client had used this place as a hide out only days ago. Somehow, they knew he was coming. He kicks a rusted hinge. It loudly scrapes across the floor.

An old man steps out of the shadows to stop it under his foot.

“You know something,” Boba says. “Something I need to know.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Boba took his blaster from his hip. “Does this change anything?”

The man’s eyes widen in shock. “I don’t even know what you want.”

“Someone sent a transmission from here not even a week ago. You know who it was, and you’re going to tell me.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I drop you where you stand. Do I look like I’m kidding around to you?” He points the blaster at the man’s chest. “Jango Fett job. Who put it up?”

“Alright, alright.” The stranger raises his hands. “She’s on- on Coruscant, the Red Hand Inn. On the lower levels. She- look, she already- she already knows about it.”

“Who is it?”

Before he can answer, he is silenced forever by a blaster bolt to the head. The man is dead before he hits the ground. It isn’t Boba’s shot.

“Someone who knew you were coming,” says a voice from above. Dozens of them drop from the ceiling like spiders. They have him surrounded. Blaster fire rains on him from all sides. Boba holds his ground, or tries to, but he’s outnumbered.

Good thing he carries explosives. Ripping one out of its pack, he throws it against the ground and runs. The red lights blink rapidly. Boba runs, forcing his way through the swarm of what must be hired goons. The walls crumble like sand, the force of the blast throwing him to the ground. He skids across the asphalt, sparks flying from friction. Flames lick at the mountain of smoking rubble. When his head stops spinning, he crawls to his feet.

Time to pay a visit to Coruscant. Unfortunately. Core Worlds are the _worst_.

Even the lower, grittier levels of Coruscant are suspended high enough that it feels like he’s floating as he walks up to the Red Hand Inn. It’s the kind of hotel that charges by the hour. When he swipes a gloved fingertip across the counter, it comes away coated in black grease.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says. The secretary smacks her lips.

“Can’t help you with that.”

“She’s here.” The great thing about wearing a full suit of armor is that people come to all sorts of conclusions about what his body language means. They intimidate themselves. All he has to do is crack his knuckles and jerk his head to the side, and the secretary is all too willing to talk.

He does not knock. The door swings open with a minimum of force.

“Oh, hey kiddo.” She waits for him, leaning against the windowsill with her hands firmly planted on the ledge. One ankle is crossed behind the other. There’s a flash of recognition in her eyes, and she shifts. Her face melts away to reveal another, more familiar one. “I haven’t seen you since you were ten.”

“Zam Wesell?” His stomach sinks like a stone. Behind his helmet, he gapes at her. “I can’t believe this. You’re the one who called a hit on my dad? 

Zam gives him a noncommittal shrug. “Hey, now, it’s only fair. He tried to kill me on Coruscant a few years ago. I met the guy before you even existed, and he leaves me to rot in the street!”

“I know you betrayed him,” Boba snaps. “You’re lucky you survived. You should have called it even.”

Zam rolls her eyes. “You know that’s not how this works.”

“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t face him yourself.”

“Because I know Jango! Maybe not as well as I thought I did, but the man has an ego bigger than some moons. I was trying to lure _him_ out to me, not you.” She sighs. “Boba, go home.”

“And then what? Wait for you to kill us? I don’t think so.”

“I never meant for you to get all caught up in this. Honestly.”

“You know I can’t leave you alive, right?” He asks himself as much as he asks her. When he was little, Zam would drop by Kamino every now and then to talk business with his dad. She used to tell him funny stories; he used to call her his aunt.

Of course, Kamino was a long time ago.

“You think you know people,” Zam grumbles, shaking her head. “Must be a family trait. Well, come on. Let’s get this over with.”

Fast as her draw is, Boba’s is faster. They are at a standstill, blasters locked at each other’s heads. She lines up to take a shot, eyes darting to the side for just a moment. Before he can react, she fires. Boba dives. The blaster bolt leaves a smoldering hole only inches from his face, and Zam is on the move, scrambling to the ledge and throwing herself out the window. Boba peers over the edge. From that sharp angle, he can’t see her.

Jetpacks have their advantages. He powers his up and soars after her. There she is, clinging to the wall by a narrow ledge. Blaster in hand, he swoops down, bracing himself for the recoil. She gets him first, whipping around to shoot him square in the chest.

He doesn’t die. Through the armor, it’s not enough to kill him. The force of the blast is enough to knock him out of the sky. Air rushes out of his lungs. He wants to scream. He can’t. Wind throws his body end over end and he thinks this is the end.

Struggling to right himself, Boba flicks his wrist backwards. A cord shoots out of his wrist, hooking around a drainage pipe along the bottom of the roof. He barely manages to catch himself before it’s too late. Planting his feet on the side of the building, he pulls himself up inch by inch, climbing up a platform to catch his breath and regroup.

For a moment, he thinks, with a sinking feeling, that she’s gone. Then he sees her, though it is not the Zam he remembers, but an old woman smoking on her balcony.

“You’ll have to try harder than that,” he mutters. She glares and aims a blaster at him. He shoots her before she gets a chance.

Fetts never miss.

The blaster bolt slices through her skull, right between her eyes. Clawdite blood splatters against the brick wall like unmixed paint. Her human form melts away, leaving only the scales Zam was born with.

He doesn’t know how to feel about it. She isn’t even the first person he’s killed, but it’s different. He knows her, or at least he did, once. And she knew him and Jango, but she was willing to kill both of them. It all evens out, so he shouldn’t think about it.

He thinks about it.

In a daze, he makes his way back to the ship. He barely gets any sleep in hyperspace. When he gets back home, its morning, and Jango is sipping his caff.

“Boba! Welcome back. Want a cup?”

“I guess,” he says. He goes to pour himself a mug, but his dad beats him to it.

“So,” Jango says, handing him a cup of caff, “How was the job?”

Boba slides the helmet off his head, setting it on the kitchen table. He runs a hand through his hair.

“It was a hunt. I don’t know if I could call it a bounty.” There might be bounty on her, but that’s not why he did it. “Did you know Zam was still alive?”

“She’s supposed to be dead.”

“She thought the same thing about you. I…” Boba trails off. “She is dead, now.”

Jango hums, like he knows exactly what Boba isn’t saying. He reaches across the table to set the palm of his hand on Boba’s forearm. He gives it a small, understanding squeeze. “You did what you had to do.”

They never mention it again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope the background AU comes through clearly. I didn't want to dump more exposition than was necessary.


End file.
